Ireland '23 - bibliography 

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Below is a list of books which were pertinent to my trip to Ireland:

Fodors Ireland, 2013 was my main guide besides online resources. A few items were out of date, but not many. 

The Most Beautiful Villages in Ireland, w/252 color illustrations, 2000, by writer Christopher Fitz-Simmon, and Photographer Hugh Palmer, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, Publishers. I bought this attractive photo book on a whim in 2021 and once our itinerary was planned, I was glad to see I'd be staying at three of them: Knightstown, Kenmare, and Carlingford.

Family Walks Around Dublin, a Walking Guide, by Adrian Hendroff, 2017, Collins Press, Cork, Ireland. This excellent book with maps was the info source for the Grand Canal walk.    

Cork, Kerry & Southwest Ireland Road Trips, 2020, Lonely Planet Global Limited. This small guide has great maps that show the most scenic drives along the entire south coast, from Limerick in the west to Cork in the east.       

Jonathan Swift, His Life and His World, by Leo Damrosch, 2013, Yale University Press. I first read this book in 2021, and after this trip read it again. Swift is one of the most interesting persons I've ever read about. 

note - see way below for the story about Swift & Stella.

Lessons from the Bench, Reflections from a life spent in Ireland's Criminal Court, by (retired) Judge Gillian Hussey, Gill Books, 2022. This book covers a wide spectrum of social issues as seen in the 40 years prior to the Judge's retirement in 2004. Bought it on a whim at the National Art Museum gift shop, this book gave me a completely unexpected (cultural) perspective on the city of Dublin.   

An Unsung Hero, Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor, by Michael Smith, 2000, Collins Press. The great thing about this book is that you learn all about the Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, as well as the Amundsen triumph of being the first to reach the south pole, in Antarctica, 800 miles away, at 10,000 ft.  It is not long before you realize you are reading a collection of the greatest outdoor adventure/survival tales ever told. 

This is a well-written book & it is amazing that so little was known about Crean until this book came out. Turns out in his later years - helping his wife run the South Pole Pub - it was a time of strong anti-British sentiment in Ireland and he had to keep mum about his 27 years in the British Navy, and he hid the medals given to him in person by the King of England.  

Neolithic Britain, The transformation of Social Worlds, by Keith Ray and Julian Thomas, 2018 Oxford University Press. This book, written by two of Britain's pre-eminent Neolithic era archeologists, reads a bit like a textbook, and when I read it in '22, I learned about passage tombs like Tara, Nowth, and Newgrange & it was my intro to the Neolithic era.

Neolithic "passage tombs", oriented to a solstice sunrise or sunset, were constructed in Ireland, Scotland, France, the Orkneys, and parts of Norway. This possibly shows a wide-spread belief in cosmic rebirth, a kind of Solstice-based belief, before a time of written language, a true historical mystery & the tombs are silent on the subject. Archeologists are loathe to speculate but this book certainly does present the evidence. 

AllTrails online was a great resource in looking for walks in Dublin, Killarney, or on the Ring of Kerry. I re-did my itinerary to allow for walks on the RoK, but crappy weather intervened.  And perusing their walks online helped orient me to Dublin beforehand. 

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The story of Stella (or Hester Johnson), who Dean Swift is buried next to, is cloaked in mystery, from the beginning. How many Deans of Cathedrals have their wives buried in the beautiful tile floor next to them? But there's no doubt that Stella was a huge part of Jonathan Swift's life and his main emotional support. They spent decades together under the same roof.   

Swift first met Hester when he was a fresh Oxford Divinity grad and tutor to a wealthy Uncle's offspring and some of the servants, one of them being Hester, 16 years younger than him. Over a decade or more they formed a deep bond, and once Swift became Dean, they lived together & people assumed they were married, although no formal records survive.

Over time, a change occurred, after which they lived separately, but in the same house, according to Journal entries made by his friends.   

Author Damrosch states that modern biographers of Swift made an educated guess that once together for some time as a couple, Jonathan & Stella put 2 + 2 (on the family tree) together, and realized they were both probably the offspring of the same mentioned Uncle, who was apparently sexually active for a long time, although they had different Moms. 

Stella was immensely important to Dean Swift's well-being, for a long time, and his closest friends remarked in their dairies about his devastation after she died early from a chronic condition.

Final historical note - the Damrosch book shows a Parcel Map for the Dublin neighborhood where the Cathedral was, from the 1740s, and, each house 'fronts' onto a street, and had an attached plot of land, long & thin, like an acre or two, out back, for gardens & fruit trees. As a result, behind the houses it was like an open space park. 

Walking through the city blocks surrounding the Cathedral today, this is hard to imagine ! 

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